Monday, July 14, 2008

VRM and the Medical Home concept

During the opening remarks to the Workshop Doc Searls asked what areas within organizations might be most receptive to the adoption of Vendor Relationship Management (VRM)?

This question prompted this session. It struck me that the industry initiative in Health Care around the Medical Home concept might be Health Care's sweet spot.

Emerging issues in Health Care will help push the role of VRM. These include:

  • The rise in the power of the consumer
  • Public policy and the uninsured

In a conservative industry VRM might find a role as an enabler of the Medical Home. Medical Home is being promoted by the industry as a solution to improving the quality and efficiency with which care services are provided, particularly with respect to complex health issues.

The coach, advocate or practitioner that guides an individual through the maze of health care services can be considered a vendor partner of the patient. They can help pull together all of the relevant information to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of diagnostics and treatment.

During the discussion in the session a number of points emerged:

  • Google is supporting Continuity of Care Record (CCR). They have also adopted Atom as the standard for sharing CCRs.

some of the participants are already working with solutions in this space:

Some of the conclusions from the session:

  • Information is the bedrock on which Medical Home depends.
  • The advocate or coach in a Medical Home program could be treated as "just another vendor" from a VRM perspective.
  • The open standards of OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial and other standards can be used to enable MedicalVRM.

2 comments:

  1. This session was very insightful, Mark illustrated the concept of Medical Home and the important role of the Payer.

    The concept of "workflow" and best approach to care is a theme that is important to consider in the context of VRM, to make it useful to the health industry.

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  2. I agree with you and to say that there are many "vendors" that a person deals with throughout the system. From specialist to care givers to the hospitals themselves, all of them need to be accountable to the buyers/patients throught Key Preformance Indicators that are vabluable to the patient community.

    I would like to discuss with you ever is interested, we already have the technology to track vendor performance and feed it back to the community.

    Regards,
    Tom Hawkett
    Connect4Growth Corp.
    www.connect4growth.com

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